In typical cellular systems today, and particularly, in code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, the communication network is divided into a series of cells over a geographic area. Each cell is typically centered around at least one base transceiver station (BTS). Each cell also is usually divided into a fixed number of sectors having directional transmission/receiving capabilities. One typical sectorization scheme divides the cell into three equal sectors each covering 120° of the cell site. Other sectorization schemes may generally have sectors covering 60°, 30° or any other chosen coverage range. However, once the sectorization scheme has been chosen, it generally remains fixed for the life of the cell and/or BTS.
Unlike current cell sectorization schemes, cell site traffic does not usually remain constant or fixed. Sector traffic may even widely vary depending on the time of day. For example, one sector may be heavily loaded during rush hour traffic times, but at all other times only very lightly loaded. Heavy site traffic may have the undesirable consequence of causing some calls or communication links to be dropped, thus, decreasing the reliability and efficiency of the sector and the cell site in general.
Similarly, environmental conditions are hardly predictable and may cause drastic and unpredictable variations in sector performance.
It would therefore be advantageous to have a system and method for estimating the load on each sector of a cellular network cell and then, based on the comparative loads, dynamically change the dimensions of any one or more sectors in order to equalize the loading of the entire cell.